Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Domains

Domain: vanderburg.org

Stories and comments across the archive that link to vanderburg.org.

Comments · 8

  1. Re:NIHS by metamatic · · Score: 5, Interesting · on Sixteen Years Later: GNU Still Needs An Extension Language

    Not Invented Here Syndrome is why they didn't use Tcl either (which is still being actively developed).

    Tcl being a joke of a language is why they didn't use Tcl; see Stallman's original explanation.

  2. Re:What happened to Tcl? by dkf · · Score: 1 · on Sun Hires Two Key Python Developers

    Why you should not use Tcl Gosh, now that's an ancient reference (about 14 years old) that's full of BS (and has been for well over a decade). About the only point I'd concede is that Tcl still isn't keen on linked lists, which is on the grounds that for most code a vector (i.e. collection indexable by numeric position) is a better choice.
  3. Re:What happened to Tcl? by Ed+Avis · · Score: 2, Insightful · on Sun Hires Two Key Python Developers

    Honestly, looking back, I'm glad TCL didn't win. It's a horrible language.
    Why you should not use Tcl

    upvar+uplevel in place of pass-by-reference?
    Indeed, you feel you need a bath after using upvar. But plenty of other languages lack proper references; Python for example (though it can kind of emulate them with the Ref container). (Python programmers at this point will retort that it does have references, indeed every variable is a reference. In which case you move the discussion one level up and the question becomes: why no references to (mutable) references?)

    Unstructured strings as the fundamental representation for everything?
    Everything runs on your computer using memory, which is a big long string of bytes. Ultimately, an unstructured string is the fundamental representation for all data in all languages. What matters is the tools the language provides to let you manipulate the data in that string.

    The inability to parse the language without simultaneously interpreting it?
    Perl also suffers from this problem.

    I'm sorry, but after a decade of experience I think I can say it's just awful.
    I can't argue with that. But at least it sucks in interesting and playful ways.
  4. Re:JavaScript -vs- Lua by SimHacker · · Score: 1 · on GUIs Get a Makeover

    Yeah, I had a great fling with TCL/Tk, which was the best thing around in 1992, but I'm really glad it didn't become the Standard Scripting Language. As bad as it is, I can live with JavaScript.

    Remember RMS's Great TCL War? "Why you should not use Tcl"? But that only got more people interested in TCL. But Sun hired the authors of TCL to make it the universal scripting language of the Internet, and then squashed it with Java, so Sun deserves credit for wiping out TCL's chances of world domination, not RMS.

    But RMS was right when he said: If Tcl does become the "standard scripting language", users will curse it for years -- the way people curse Fortran, MSDOS, Unix shell syntax, and other de facto standards they feel stuck with. He forgot to mention Perl, and PHP was just being ill-conceived in 1994.

    Of course the FSF was developing GUILE as an alternative to TCL/Tk. But Lua also has all the properties that Stallman recommends for an extension language: it's a real programming language for writing and maintaining substantial programs, with arrays, structures, numbers, semantically lisp-like, but with a traditional algebraic syntax, and extremely fast execution. And it's under the MIT license (ahem), so it gets used in real world commercial products (WOW).

    But there are other important properties for a scripting language that he doesn't mention. Especially: Easy integration with C and native libraries, which is hard to get right in a Scheme system that efficiently supports full continuations. Easy integration with applications and libraries is essential!!!

    The final straw that made me decide to use Lua instead of SpiderMonkey JavaScript, was that SWIG supports LUA well, but it doesn't support SpiderMonkey. That's very important to me, because by using SWIG instead of a language-specific binding (tolua++, boost, etc), SWIG makes it easy to plug my libraries into ANY scripting language (except JavaScript ;-).

    -Don

  5. Externalize Picklists... by zettabyte · · Score: 3, Insightful · on Load List Values for Improved Efficiency
    He should be externalizing the picklists to a .properties file. He'll get the caching through Properties and the strings will be ready for localization.

    If the picklists are at all updateable while the application is running, he can cache as he does, but he'll a mechanism to invalidate the cache and re-read from the database.

    Forgetting that for a moment:
    1. Hungarian notation is NOT necessary in Java. Period. End of story.
    2. No one uses Vector anymore.
    3. There are some nice tag libraries, so STOP PUTTING JAVA CODE IN JSPS!
    If you're a code monkey, memorize these two quotes:
    Increasingly, people seem to misinterpret complexity as sophistication, which is baffling - the incomprehensible should cause suspicion rather than admiration. - Niklaus Wirth
    and
    ...it is simplicity that is difficult to make. - Bertholdt Brecht
    (quotes from http://www.vanderburg.org/Misc/Quotes/soft-quotes. html)
  6. Re:Not trolling... by the_womble · · Score: 1 · on Developing Applications with KJSEmbed
    TCL is still being used and developed. I have was very impressed at how fast development happened when Arsdigita (when it was still being run by Philip Greenspun) adapted the ACS to my then employers pretty specialist needs.

    I thought it was RMS who trashed TCL. Incidentally the linked discussions warn that people will not use TCL because RMS does not like it: Reading the discussion he does seem to ahve been guility of a certain amount of exageration of its flaws.

  7. Why you should not use Tcl by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on Tcl Core Team Interview

    Have everybody forgotten the TCL-war?

  8. Re: premature opitimization quote by alangmead · · Score: 1 · on Is Profiling Useless in Today's World?
    I usually see the premature optimization quote attributed to C.A.R. Hoare, not Knuth. According to this web page of quotes it is often misattributed because Knuth quoted Hoare on this issue.

    I agree with the rant, though. I have developed and maintained some significant sized threaded applications, and I loathe to do it again unless necessary.